Obama: The US never leaves a man behind

posted at 8:01 am on June 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Barack Obama may be in Warsaw as part of a European tour, but in a real sense he’s stuck in Washington. At a joint press conference after a state meeting in Poland, Obama got questioned about the deal that exchanged Bowe Bergdahl for five high-ranking Taliban detainees, including two wanted by the UN for crimes against humanity. Obama mainly avoided discussing the detainees, although he insisted that he was “confident” that the US could prevent them from being a threat to American security in the future.

Instead, Obama defended the action by focusing on Bergdahl, perhaps learning a lesson from Susan Rice’s jaw-dropping appearance on Sunday. Regardless of the quality of Bergdahl’s service, Obama argued, the US does not leave men and women behind. “We do not condition that” pledge to their families, and said Bergdahl’s case would be evaluated at the appropriate time:

As President Barack Obama starts his third overseas trip in less than three months, he finds himself once again peppered with questions about his foreign policy, even as he attempts to cement his own legacy on the world stage.

Obama landed Tuesday in Poland, his first stop, on a mission to reassure nervous allies in Eastern Europe after Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.

His three-nation journey comes as Republicans have unleashed a new line of attack questioning his judgment in exchanging five Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the return of a former prisoner of war, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

At a news conference in Warsaw, Obama defended the decision.

“We don’t leave men and women in uniform behind,” the President said.

Obama added, “We don’t condition that.” That’s the argument to which the White House should have stuck all along. It’s true, and it’s compelling — although it doesn’t exactly address the other side of that question, which is why it took all five of the Taliban’s wish-list detainees to make the trade. Nor does it really address how badly this hurts American security, considering that two years ago these same men were considered unreleasable by the Obama administration because of their danger to the US and others.

Obama tried defending his snub of Congress with much less success:

His administration had previously consulted with Congress on the possibility of a prisoner exchange for Bergdahl, Obama said, but had to move quickly because of concerns over Bergdahl’s health and to not miss a window of opportunity.

Really? Obama was in the Rose Garden on Saturday announcing this deal, but Congress didn’t get their official notification until yesterday. As I ask in my column for The Week, if Obama and the White House didn’t have time to inform Congress, how exactly did they find the time to get Bergdahl’s parents to Washington DC from Idaho on Saturday to participate in the Rose Garden speech?

The White House’s nonchalance about the five Taliban detainees also had people scratching their heads. Press Secretary Jay Carney tried arguing that they presented no threat to the U.S., but two of them have been charged with mass murder by the United Nations, and the Taliban celebrated their release as a “big victory” over the U.S. One detainee, Khairullah Khairkwa, was a confidante of Osama bin Laden, while Abdul Haq Wasiq served as deputy intelligence minister to the Taliban.

The deceptions didn’t stop there, either:

Susan Rice, who infamously fronted the false narrative on the Benghazi attack, appeared on ABC’s This Week and arguably did it again. When George Stephanopoulos pressed her on the lopsided trade in the context of his apparent desertion, Rice instead insisted that Berghdahl had “served the United States with honor and distinction.”

Even worse, James Rosen at Fox News reported that Bergdahl’s disappearance became the subject of an investigation by U.S. intelligence, which produced a “major classified file” on the questions of desertion — or perhaps even collaboration.

It’s difficult to credit Obama for any argument when he and his team at the White House keep destroying their own credibility. They seem intent on undermining themselves even when the truth would work better for them.

Blowback

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Comments

This wasn’t a ‘man’, it was a deserter.
We never traded spies or anything else with the Russians for the deserters from Korea that they ‘hosted’, we let them rot there in the Socialist Paradise they preferred.

AMERICA DOES NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS….OBAMA, A TERRORIST-SYMPATHIZER, DOES…BUT AMERICA DOESN’T! IF OBAMA WOULD HAVE DECLARED WHEN HE RAN AGAINST MCCAIN THAT HE WOULD READILY NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS, ESPECIALLY TO RELEASE THE TOP ENEMY TERRORISTS, HE WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ELECTED PRESIDENT!

HE BROKE THE LAW TO DO THIS, EVEN DECLARED YESTERDAY,”I NEVER LIKED THAT LAW”…

So, no man is ever left behind…ever? Suppose our adversaries in the negotiations had asked for the release of 125 detainees, instead of just 5? Would we have held out for a better deal? If the answer is “yes”, then whether or not someone is “left behind” is actually subject to negotiation. We damn well would have left Bergdahl behind if the price of his release would have been 125 detainees.

In this particular case, the price of Bergdahl’s release was just right, so he was brought home.

So, no man is ever left behind…ever? Suppose our adversaries in the negotiations had asked for the release of 125 detainees, instead of just 5? Would we have held out for a better deal? Steelweaver52 on June 3, 2014 at 3:36 PM

No. To quote the cartoon on Townhall:
King Putt – “I don’t negotiate with terrorists. I give them whatever they want.”

The President, as smart as he has tried to make U.S. believe, knew that Sgt Bergdahl was not a POW of the Mideast conflict. The manner Sgt Bergdahl became a captive (walking off his post and into the hand of the enemy for a 5 year hiatus from his perceived captivity in the U.S. Army) did not make Sgt Bergdahl a POW.

Also, figures show that there are no POW’s held by the Taliban or al Quaida, because Islamic belief says that capturing and holding prisoners cost money and restricts their movements. Therefore, anyone captured is tortured for information and then executed.